Carol had been struggling to get by on a widow’s pension of just £90 a month since a heart attack killed her husband Peter in 2001.

Despair: The bus shelter where Carol slept after her eviction (Image: Matthew Pover)

Her rent and council tax were covered for her by public money.

But everything else – including power bills – was funded from her pitiful £3-a-day pension.

Carol’s plight meant she was eligible for further housing ­benefits and employment ­support allowance.

But she insisted she didn’t know about them because no one had ever mentioned them to her.

Carol – who gave up trying to have children after a string of miscarriages – said: “Things went pear-shaped after my husband died and I started losing my sight with cataracts.

“I just about managed on his pension without claiming ­anything else.

“When I started getting letters from the council I couldn’t read them. I asked them to send the details in bigger print – but they never did.

“So I ignored them until a housing officer turned up and told me I was in arrears with bedroom tax payments.

“I told him I couldn’t afford it and the next thing I knew the bailiffs were at the door.”

Carol, who has depression, claimed she was given an hour to pack up her possessions as the flat in Waddington, Lincs, was cleared in April.

She said: “I was in such a state I couldn’t find the only picture I have of my mum and dad.

“I had to tell the bailiffs I couldn’t afford to pay for any of my stuff to go into storage so they might as well take it all – which they did.”

Good times: Carol and Peter on their wedding day in 1998 (Image: Matthew Pover)

She gave a neighbour her pet canary and went to stay with a friend, having lost touch with her own family.

But a week later she moved out, spent a night in a bus-shelter, then built her rudimentary camp in a cow-field. Carol said: “My friend would have lost her housing benefits if I’d carried on staying with her so I decided the field was my only solution.”

The decision was not as bizarre as it sounds because as the daughter of an agricultural labourer she had grown up on a farm helping with animals as well as planting and picking crops.

Recalling her time living rough, Carol said: “I’d walk round the village by day and at night I’d go to the field and bed down under the plastic.

“When I needed the loo I’d dig a hole in a hedgerow and I didn’t bother combing my hair or washing.” She added: “You don’t think it’s mad when you’re as low as I was then.”

Carol was finally rescued by worried Waddington friends who took her to the church of St Mary-le-Wigford in nearby Lincoln, the base of a charity helping the vulnerable.

City councillor Jackie Kirk, who helps to run the project, found Carol a bed at a shelter for the homeless.

Jackie said: “Carol is a remarkably brave woman. She worked all her life and after her husband died she was eligible for Employment Support Allowance and Discretionary Housing Payments. “

But as many vulnerable people discover too late, if you don’t know you’re entitled and don’t ­apply you end up as a victim of the system.”

And Carol said: “I’d like David Cameron to spend a day with me so he could see the impact his government’s Bedroom Tax has on people like me who already live below the poverty line.

Campaign: Our cover in May 2013

“I just have the clothes I stand up in and my life in a few treasured letters and photos in a box.

“If someone had bothered to sit down with me in April when the bailiffs came in and explained what I needed to do instead of leaving me with a pile of forms I couldn’t even read I might still have a home.”

It was a flat Carol had battled to keep. At one stage she was so skint she sold her gold wedding ring for a paltry £32 to pay an electricity bill.

It had been given to her by ex-RAF mechanic Peter when they wed in 1998.

Carol, who was 40 at the time, had met him when he was working as a hospital caretaker in Waddington.

She said: “We had a very happy ­marriage but sadly he died three years later from a heart attack.

“I found it really hard coping alone. For a time I drank too much instead of eating properly or looking after myself but thank God I got myself sorted out in the end.

“It was hard having so little money but I don’t need much and I got used to it.

“The extra for the bedroom tax was something I was never going to manage to cover without claiming allowances.

Care: Carol in the church where she found help (Image: Matthew Pover)

“It was only when I became homeless I found out I was entitled to anything.

“It breaks my heart to think I sold my wedding ring just to pay the electric.”

Carol is now due to have surgery to remove cataracts in her eyes.

She has also applied to city chiefs for sheltered ­accommodation in Lincoln.

Carol was the first tenant to be evicted by North Kesteven District Council since the Bedroom Tax rules ­became law under the Welfare Reform Act in March 2012.

Civic officer Philip Roberts ­declined to discuss individual cases but said: “Taking a tenant to court is a last resort but the council would follow all its procedures to establish whether the person facing ­eviction was vulnerable in any way.”

The Department for Work and Pensions said: “We have made £345million­ available to councils to support the most ­vulnerable people since our reforms were introduced, including more than £240,000 to North Kesteven.”

But Lucy Rigby, who will fight the marginal seat of Lincoln for Labour at the General Election in May, said: “Mrs Sutherland’s plight beggars belief.

“Our Tory MP Karl McCartney has voted repeatedly for the Bedroom Tax – now he can see the effects of his actions in his own back yard.”

A Sunday People investigation this year found up to 40,000 tenants have been ­wrongly billed for the tax – including Stephanie Bottrill, 53, who killed herself in May 2013 because she couldn’t afford the charge in Solihull, West Midlands.

A DWP spokesperson said: “There are often many reasons for evictions – including when tenants fail to engage - and the majority of social landlords ensure this is a last resort.”